A Summer to Remember

Over the summer earlier this year I got some community service hours working as a camp counselor at a summer camp. It was a 4 week program and I was really enjoying it. All I had to do was help kids with activates like archery, hiking and canoeing. It was a lot of fun even though I was the youngest counselors there. The second youngest counselor and I quickly became friends but because we were the youngest we often got stuck with the jobs that no one else wanted to do like washing the restrooms and cleaning dishes after meals. His name was Ryan and he was a native who lived with his parents just down the street from the camp. I had fun and made friends.

Before I go farther into the story I need to explain to you some things about the camp. Back in the days before the camp was built a small river ran through the property. This river powered a wheat mill that was used to grind wheat for natives in the surrounding area. As the number of natives decreased so did the need for the flour mill. It was soon abandon and left to rot. But then some entrepreneurs came along and say the land had potential for being a summer camp. So they dug a manmade lake, built some cabins and activate centers and converted the wheat mill into a power source. They built a reservoir to increase water flow and increase the amount of electricity that could be produced. When they needed power they simply opened a water gate and let the water and the old mill do the rest. Due to the increase of water flow the river began to flood its banks in low lying areas further downstream. One of these low lying areas was the property of Bob Smith. He immediately complained to the owners of the camp but the owners said that nothing could be done to help him.

That brings us back to current time in which the property owner, Bob, was at the front gate of the camp shouting at the owners to close the gate. Naturally I asked Ryan what was going on. He said, “That dude is Bob. He comes to the camp on every Friday threatening the owners of the camp. You see the river overflows on his property and he’s pretty upset about it.” When I asked him why Bob didn’t sue the camp he responded, “He’s tried to sue the camp but no lawyer will take his case because they think Bob is crazy” at that point we overheard the shouts of the camp owner threatening to call the cops if Bob didn’t leave the property immediately. Bob shouted “I’LL BE BACK!” and stormed of the campground.

The next Friday he showed up at the camp again with the same result. This also marked the halfway point of the summer camp program. But the third Friday he didn’t show up. Everyone at the camp saw this as a good sign. Well everyone but me.

That night in the counselors’ cabin we were playing poker trying to pass the time when the power went out. Nobody really wanted to go outside in the middle of the night to try and fix the power so we drew straw and Ryan got the short one. He went out into the night with his flashlight to check the power generator. The rest of us sat in the dark for a bit talking about our plans for the rest of the summer were. We talked for a while but the power did not come back on and Ryan had not come back. That’s the point when I remembered that we were in the middle of bear country. We quickly formed a search party but before we started searching we went to the activity center and grabbed some bows and arrows from storage.

We looked all over the camp for Ryan but he was nowhere to be found. We were about to call the search off when we saw something floating out on the lake. At first we thought Ryan was just having a midnight swim. But when we called him he didn’t give us any kind of response. When we looked closer we realized that his head was turned 180 degrees and he was looking at his back. But that wasn’t the worst part, the lower half of his body had been sliced into strips about 1 cm in with. It looked kind of like the lower half of his body had been put thru a human sized paper shredder. We immediately panicked and were debating whether or not to go and get the body because whatever did that to him might still be in the area. It was at that point that we heard a growl coming from the bushes next to us. I notched an arrow and shot it into the bushed. The sound that came next haunts me to this day. The best description that I can give you is that it sounded like a girl’s high pitch scream mixed with shattering glass and nails on a chalkboard.

We took off like a shot back to the cabin. The second we got back we locked the door and put a board over it. The girls (who all stayed in the cabin) asked us what happened. As we were telling them we heard something pound on the door trying to get in. I notched another arrow and waited while everyone else went to hide under beds or locked themselves in the washroom. When the pounding stopped the others started to come out of there hiding places. That’s when the window shattered and I heard the thing hissing. But it wasn’t like an animal hissing, it sounded more like steam hissing out of a crack in a pipe. I then did the only logical thing to do and shot my arrow. It made contact with the things left shoulder and knocked the thing off the window. I notched another arrow and waited for the thing to come back but it never did.

The next morning we told the camp owners everything that we saw, they in turn called the police who started questioning us. The police searched the campgrounds for any evidence but they found nothing, not even Ryan’s body. They suspected that it was washed downstream and started searching there. The rest of my time at the camp went normally except for the last Friday. On the last Friday Bob didn’t show up. Nothing strange happened that night but that didn’t stop everyone from being on edge. That Sunday everyone packed their bags and got on the bus. As my bus was leaving I saw Bob leaning against the fence near the entrance of the camp. He had an arrow stuck in his left shoulder and another one stuck in his knee. I looked at him and he smiled, he had teeth like circular blades kind of like the ones you would fine in a paper shredder.